‘There aren’t many places like this left’: Elbo...

1of39FILE-- Monk Funkster stands outside the Elbo Room with fellow musicians preparing to start the fifth annual Fat Tuesday parade through the Mission district in San Francisco on Tuesday Feb. 9, 2016. The bar will officially close on Jan. 1. The building housing it on Valencia has been sold to new owners.Photo: Brittany Murphy / The Chronicle

2of39FILE-- The audience at Elbo Room watches as Gravity Goldberg, cofounder of Instant City, begins the literary magazine's 5th anniversary festivities with a game show on Monday, May 17, 2010. The bar will officially close on Jan. 1. The building housing it on Valencia has been sold to new owners.Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

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So begins what co-owner Matt Shapiro considers a last call for the city, a final stretch for past patrons, musical acts and folks just interested in seeing what the Elbo Room hype was all about, to say goodbye.

The bar will officially close on Jan. 1. The building housing it on Valencia has been sold to new owners. Shapiro earlier this year opened a new Elbo Room in Oakland.

So, what does goodbye look like at a place like the Elbo Room? If you ask Shapiro, it has the veneer of a normal night at the bar — music, drinks, laughter, maybe some dancing. Just these days, there’s more reminiscing about the bar’s history, ranging from the obscure to the widely known.

The Elbo Room has hosted more than 7,500 shows over its 27-year run, according to Shapiro. Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, Grupo Fantasma, and local acts like the Bayonics have all passed through the doors. (The bar’s final lineup can be found here.)

Long before it became a bar or music venue, the Elbo Room’s building was home to a mortuary.

“There’s a ghost that has been here for like, forever,” Shapiro said with a laugh before describing an incident where he was in the back of the bar one afternoon when a blue figure brushed past him.

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“When I think about this place, I think about how everyone has stories. It could be about the music, or a first date, or maybe even that ghost, but a lot of people have stories here.”

Elbo Room’s pending closure comes as part of a spate of music venue shutdowns in San Francisco over the last few years. Red Devil Lounge closed on Polk Street back in 2014. Viracocha, the basement venue on Valencia Street, closed in 2015. Hemlock Tavern on Polk Street is gone. And earlier this year, a petition was floating around online to save Mezzanine, a music venue located at 444 Jessie St., set to close in 2019.

“These last days, we just want people to come out and enjoy it until the end,” Shapiro said. “The Elbo Room is a special place. A lot of people are going to miss it.”

Justin Phillips joined the San Francisco Chronicle in November 2016 as a food writer. He previously served as the City, Industry, and Gaming reporter for the American Press in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He extensively covered the growth and transformation of Southwest Louisiana’s multibillion dollar energy sector. Justin also served as a columnist for the American Press where he won a Louisiana-Mississippi Associated Press Media Editors award for his weekly food column. In the past, Justin spent time working in the newsrooms of the Contra Costa Times, the Tri Valley Herald, and the Oakland Tribune. He studied journalism at Louisiana Tech University.